American Academy of Arts and Letters honors Yale composers
Awardees include Steven Burke ’94MM, Ted Hearne ’08MM, ’09MMA, and Stephen Feigenbaum ’12BA, ’13MM
The American Academy of Arts and Letters, an honor society whose members members are elected as the highest formal recognition of artistic merit in the United States, have announced the sixteen recipients for this year's awards in music. This year, three Yale School of Music composers are among the recipients of these prestigious awards. The candidates for music awards are nominated by the Academy's 250 members and selected by a committee. Steven Burke '94MM will receive one of four Arts and Letters Award in Music. This award honors outstanding artistic achievement and acknowledges the composer who has arrived at his or her own voice. Recipients are given additional funds to support the recording of one work. Ted Hearne '08MM, '09MMA is one of two composers to be awarded the Charles Ives Fellowship. Harmony Ives, the widow of Charles Ives, bequeathed to the Academy the royalties of Ives' music, which has enabled the Academy to give these awards in composition since 1970. Stephen Feigenbaum, '12BA, '13MM, is a recipient of the Charles Ives Scholarship. The award is given to composition students of great promise; this year, six young composers received the scholarship. Each year, the Academy honors over 50 composers, artists, architects, and writers with cash awards ranging from $5,000 to $100,000. Awards will be presented at the Academy's annual Ceremonial in May.
About the Award Recipients
Steven Burke has been awarded a Charles Ives Fellowship from the AAAL in 1999. He also won a Rome Prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship, and has received commissions from the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University, the Jerome Foundation, the ASCAP Foundation, the National Symphony Orchestra, the Seattle Symphony, the St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble, Yaddo and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. He holds degrees from Sarah Lawrence College, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Yale and Cornell. Stephen Feigenbaum’s music has been heard at Lincoln Center and (le) Poisson Rouge in New York, the Hatch Shell and Jordan Hall in Boston, the Green Room in San Francisco, Lobkowicz Palace in Prague, by ensembles and musicians including the Cincinnati Pops (performed and recorded for Telarc under the late Erich Kunzel), the Albany Symphony, the JACK quartet, and pianist Lisa Moore. His musical Independents, at the SoHo Playhouse last summer, was a New York Times Critic’s Pick and one of Huffington Post’s top ten shows of 2012.
Ted Hearne is a composer, conductor and singer. His Katrina Ballads was awarded the 2009 Gaudeamus Prize, and named one of the best classical albums of 2010 by Time Out Chicago and The Washington Post. His projects have paired him with electronic artists Philip White and J.G. Thirlwell, jazz musician Rene Marie, filmmaker Bill Morrison, and the French synthpop band M83. He is a founding member of Sleeping Giant, the leader of Delusion Story, and one half of the electronic/vocal duo R WE WHO R WE. Commissions include works for Los Angeles Philharmonic, eighth blackbird, A Far Cry, Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Albany Symphony, The Crossing and Ensemble Klang, Brooklyn Philharmonic and hiphop legend Erykah Badu.
